Beijing has turned up the pressure on Tokyo after Japanese prime-minister Sanae Takaichi publicly committed to military support for Taiwan. On 21 November, China’s culture-and-tourism ministry issued a nationwide advisory telling citizens to ‘carefully reconsider’ travel to Japan, citing ‘security risks and hostile social sentiment’. Within hours, the country’s three state-owned travel giants—China CYTS, Ctrip and CTS—pulled Japan package tours from their portals, and several regional education bureaus advised students to postpone study-abroad plans.
Airlines moved quickly. State carriers began fee-free refund windows on Japan-bound tickets, and charter groups to Hokkaido and Okinawa were cancelled. The backlash follows Beijing’s suspension of Japanese seafood imports on 19 November and a pause in talks to reopen the long-closed beef market. Analysts say tourism, worth an estimated US$13 billion a year to Japan pre-Covid, will feel the squeeze first; Japan welcomed 9.5 million Chinese visitors in 2019 but only 2.1 million so far in 2025.
![Beijing escalates Japan row with sweeping travel warnings and tour cancellations]()
For multinational firms the immediate questions concern duty-of-care and relocation planning. Companies with staff in Japan are reviewing crisis-communication trees, while those with upcoming assignments are weighing alternative locations such as South Korea or Singapore for regional meetings. Insurance brokers report an uptick in enquiries about political-risk add-ons for policies covering expatriate housing in Tokyo.
Diplomatically, Beijing is signalling that economic levers—tourism, students, food imports—remain its preferred toolkit. A foreign-ministry spokesperson said normalisation ‘depends entirely on Japan reversing its erroneous remarks on Taiwan’. Observers note that China used similar tactics against South Korea in 2017 during the THAAD missile dispute.
Travel-industry executives hope the spat will de-escalate before the lucrative Lunar-New-Year booking season. ‘If the advisory is still in place by January, we could lose 30 percent of first-quarter outbound volume,’ warned the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute.
Airlines moved quickly. State carriers began fee-free refund windows on Japan-bound tickets, and charter groups to Hokkaido and Okinawa were cancelled. The backlash follows Beijing’s suspension of Japanese seafood imports on 19 November and a pause in talks to reopen the long-closed beef market. Analysts say tourism, worth an estimated US$13 billion a year to Japan pre-Covid, will feel the squeeze first; Japan welcomed 9.5 million Chinese visitors in 2019 but only 2.1 million so far in 2025.
For multinational firms the immediate questions concern duty-of-care and relocation planning. Companies with staff in Japan are reviewing crisis-communication trees, while those with upcoming assignments are weighing alternative locations such as South Korea or Singapore for regional meetings. Insurance brokers report an uptick in enquiries about political-risk add-ons for policies covering expatriate housing in Tokyo.
Diplomatically, Beijing is signalling that economic levers—tourism, students, food imports—remain its preferred toolkit. A foreign-ministry spokesperson said normalisation ‘depends entirely on Japan reversing its erroneous remarks on Taiwan’. Observers note that China used similar tactics against South Korea in 2017 during the THAAD missile dispute.
Travel-industry executives hope the spat will de-escalate before the lucrative Lunar-New-Year booking season. ‘If the advisory is still in place by January, we could lose 30 percent of first-quarter outbound volume,’ warned the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute.
